My Tricky Brain

This is a story about how a depressed brain starts to cut back on things. Parts of your brain stop functioning. It can impact your memories and vision amongst other things. These are a couple of reflections I’ve had on the impact my own brain has had on itself.

First off, my memory…

I met people whilst at one of my lowest points while we were living in London. In the midst of multiple panic attacks and a period of intense depression. Then we moved back to New Zealand. A few years passed and these people moved back to Wellington too. My wife remembered them and they remembered us. We even talked about a specific time we hung out with mutual friends. I had absolutely nothing. Not, I remember your face, but can’t quite get your name. Absolutely nothing at all.

Now, they must have thought I was either incredibly rude, or incredibly forgetful. But the truth was, I’d met them at a time where my brain wasn’t in the business of creating memories. I was in pure survival mode when I met them. I was treading water with my mouth and nose just above the surface.

I was spending so much time focussing on my anxieties and failings that I had switched off other parts of my brain. I don’t know how much else from that period and others in my life I’ve ‘forgotten’. I guess the reason I’m reflecting on it is that sometimes your mental health feels impossible to quantify. But the absence of normal brain function feels like a tangible and measurable thing. Like I can point to moments in time where I struggle to remember things and think, ‘wow, I must have been very low then’.

Next up, my vision…

This is from a moment where I had been on new medication for a month or so.

I had a strange interaction the other morning. I had just dropped off my daughter at school and was talking to her friend's mother. After months of finding social interactions and casual conversation difficult, I was surprised to find that my small talk flowed. It was weird. For a moment I felt like my old self.

Then as I walked off down the driveway of the school I noticed that I could see out of the corners of my eyes. It was like blinkers had been taken off me. There was more light in the world and the greenness of the grass was striking. Things hadn’t looked that vibrant in long enough that I’d forgotten about it. It must have been four months or more. But suddenly, the world had opened up again.

I walked home with my head back, taking it all in. It felt strange on my neck. Like I had been walking around with a weight around it like a tie that had been taken off. I felt more engaged and connected with the world around me than I had in ages.

My next session with my therapist I told her about this. I felt a bit silly, like maybe it was some kind of placebo effect. But she took it seriously and said that it wasn’t unheard of. More than anything, I think it helped me re-commit myself to the journey I was on. We all like to feel like we’re making progress and this felt like real progress to me.

I know this is all pretty anecdotal, but I used to hear people say ‘I was depressed’ and wanted to know what that meant. I was pretty sure I was too, but no one would talk about specifics. Something in me always sought out validation and evidence that would somehow prove it. I don’t know if that was for me, or for the world in general, but it felt like it mattered.

If you’ve ever had periods where you’ve felt low, depressed, worried or whatever you’ve called it yourself. And then noticed you struggle to remember things, I recommend you talk to someone about it. It might not have been your memory or vision either, you might have noticed something else. Whatever it was, if this resonated with you and you’ve never done anything about it, there’s no time like right now. Beginning a conversation about what was happening in your life around that time can uncover some things you might need to deal with and work on.